


Tangled

by Faiz



Category: Power Rangers Dino Charge
Genre: Angst, M/M, Shelby is there for like 3 seconds, Timeline Woes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:45:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9455576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faiz/pseuds/Faiz
Summary: Riley sometimes thought too hard about things, and how could Chase blame him? Time travel can do that to you.(takes place at the beginning of Here Comes Heximas)





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this is for Shane....and it was supposed to be written like a month ago....Whoops.
> 
> Also this was supposed to be a lot less angsty than it turned out but y'know what, I tried.

Riley had always had a habit of thinking too hard about things, that was something Chase had learned very early on when they had first met. Riley was a very calculative guy, and although he often still ended up going in over his head because of cockiness, he constantly seemed to know precisely what he was doing. And for the most part, that type of person was advantageous when they were still Power Rangers. The only problem was, their time as rangers has come and gone now but Riley...Well, he was still Riley. And sometimes, Riley got too lost in his own thoughts. In fact, Chase had noticed Riley had been growing more and more seemingly disconnected with the world around him. 

What were once precise movements suddenly turned clumsy. He’s dropped 4 trays of food in the past week alone, tripping over his own two feet because his mind was off elsewhere. He nearly made Miss Morgan faint in horror when she found him with a bloody arm because he had accidentally cut himself while using a training sword. But still, Chase would look at Riley and see a lost expression planted firmly on his features, his lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed slightly. 

Even though it was already Christmas Eve, Riley still looked lost. If anything he looked more distant than normal, and was quite frankly an ugly grey streak on what would otherwise be an incredibly cheerful Christmas. Both Chase and Riley had been put in charge of decorating the cafe, and while Chase had busied himself by attempting to detangle the Christmas lights, Riley was sitting staring blankly at a wall, with tinsel hanging limply from his hands. It was actually starting to irritate Chase. Maybe from a combination of pent up frustration at Riley for not saying anything to any of them and the fact that he really cannot get these lights untangled no matter how hard he tried. He tugged hard on the lights in one ditch effort (and possibly tangled them up even more without realizing) before he finally sighed in defeat and walked over to plop down next to Riley, who barely even acknowledged his presence other than to look down instead of at the wall. 

“You alright mate?” Chase asked, leaning a bit closer to Riley.

“What do you mean?” Riley asked, after a few moments of delay. Even now he was still calculating his responses, hoping to deflect any more questions.

Unfortunately for Riley, Chase knew his quirks quite well at this point. “You’ve been pretty quiet lately. I haven’t seen you work out for the past two weeks, when you used to be all about running on the track. Hell, I kinda miss you berating me for not joining you.” Chase forced out a laugh, hoping to make Riley smile. But still Riley continued to look everywhere except in Chase’s direction. “Seriously, you’ve been staring blankly at the wall all day today. That’s not the Riley I know. You didn’t even make a snarky comment when I slipped on tinsel earlier.”

Riley’s bottom lip jutted out slightly. “Maybe you don’t know the real Riley.”

Chase rolled his eyes. “Mate, trust me when I say I’ve seen more of you than most people would want to. Even some of the stories your mum and brother told me when they visited the other day have been pretty--”

“How can you believe anything _they_ say?!” Riley burst out suddenly, slamming one of his hands on the table.

It must have hurt, giving Riley’s slightly pained expression. “...Bro?” Chase was shocked at the outburst. “They’re your family...You’ve been a bit weary on them before yeah but--” Chase wasn’t even able to finish his sentence because a tap had been seemingly turned on in Riley’s mind and his words were finally tumbling out.

“How can you believe them when I’m not even sure if they’re even my family Chase? Or if anyone here are really the people we knew before we went back and changed time the way we did? I can’t be the only one who’s this upset about it, can I? I mean we can’t just be pretending like everything’s exactly the same when it _isn’t. It just isn’t!_ ”

Even though Chase didn’t know what to say in response to that, he did immediately know to wrap his arms tightly around Riley. And while on any other day Riley would have been entirely embarrassed about any sort of affection between the two, he instead gratefully leaned into Chase’s touch. He could feel a slight wetness on his shirt, and realized that Riley had started to cry.

“You have to feel it too, don’t you? Kaylee is gone….” Riley said, barely above a whisper.

This is when Chase felt a clench in his stomach. That was true...That was one of the biggest changes when they had come to this timeline. Some people that they knew had simply...disappeared. Julian, other employees of the museum-now-zoo, and Kaylee. Chase had had to do some creative searching online to learn that she had gone to a specialized university for astronauts. It had been as though they had never met.

That was the only thing that had really changed in Chase’s life, and for the sake of himself he had never tried to think too hard about any other changes that had fallen to this timeline. But even then there were things that were hard to ignore, even when they were stupidly simple things like learning that their favorite restaurant was now exactly one block over, or little facts about their own families that had been changed slightly. And of course, there were no Ivan or Koda here, and they had to remeet Zack without the pretense of Ivan been there with them.

Chase remembered that day in strangely sharp detail, especially with the way Zack seemed to so freely be able to flirt with Riley and offer to take him out for dinner one day, and the way his stomach lurched uncomfortably when Riley took him up on the offer. 

He also couldn’t forget the feeling of elation when he had heard Riley call Zack a friend and nothing more. 

“Even if Kaylee isn’t here…” Chase started. “Even if she isn’t here, that doesn’t matter. Or if things feel strange or different, just remember that we have each other. Don’t think you’re alone when you say you feel like this. I think we all have, at one point.” 

Riley nodded against his chest. 

“If you ever feel like you need to cry, don’t feel so against it. All of us are here to listen.” Chase lifted Riley’s head off and carefully wiped the tears off his face. “If you want, after we’re done getting all the decorations up all of us can get together and talk about it, right? I’m sure Ms. Morgan and the others can help shed more light on this, hell maybe we’ll be able to get some insight from Keeper and the others since they’re way more otherworldly than we are...Even if they weren’t of much help before.”

That made Riley smile a bit, and that in turn made Chase grin more widely. It was nice seeing Riley smile properly again after so long. And without thinking (because that’s what Chase was always like, doing things without properly thinking about them) he leaned forward and pressed his lips against Riley’s. Just for a moment, a very brief moment that he honestly wished were longer. And before he could see Riley’s reaction, he stood up and went over to pick up the christmas lights he had abandoned earlier.

He almost didn’t wanna turn around, not knowing what Riley’s reaction was. But before he could, he felt arms wrap around his waist, and breath against his ear.

“Wow, you really can’t detangle things to save your life, can you?” 

Chase laughed loudly, turning around in Riley’s grip and flung the lights around both of them. “There, now we’ both can’t detangle them.” 

And sure enough, they really were tangled up in them. And they were arguing, trying to figure out how to detangle themselves. And even though Riley was throwing every insult under the sun at him, Chase could see the glimmer starting to return to his eyes. 

“O-okay, lemme try going under…” Chase tugged at the lights as Riley attempted to maneuver himself, and the result was them falling both flat to the ground. 

Shelby had walked in right at that moment and groaned. “I swear, do you guys ever do anything right when you guys work together?” She turned right around and left them to their mess, not wanting to deal with it. 

And Chase took advantage, tugging on the Christmas lights to drag Riley up against him so he could wrap his arms around Riley. And this time, Riley was the one who kissed him.

Was everything completely perfect after that? Well, no. Chase was still Chase, and he still sometimes said stupid things without meaning to and got himself into messes he could have easily avoided. And Riley was still Riley, and he still sometimes thought to hard about things that threw him into distant and bad moods. But this time, they at least had each other, and they could drag each other out of their problems. They felt comfortably intertwined, christmas lights and all.


End file.
